Dave Selby
How you can get snookered when sailing
As last month’s issue of PBO seemed to be almost entirely devoted to sinking, and how to do it, the editor has asked me to be a little bit more buoyant this month, and write something about floating, and how to do it. For this you will need a boat, and this article will help you acquire the right one.
First some background. We wouldn’t want to give the impression that sinking is all there is to sailing, despite the fact that statistics from the RNLI reveal that at least 100% of the 200 sinking incidents it attended last year involved boats, as my east coast chum John Rogers pointed out in his feature last month about attempting to sink his wife Di on their wedding anniversary.
Di is apparently delighted with the Dick Everitt painting of the episode that John earned for his efforts and presented to her, and he’s promised her a frame for it on their next anniversary.
Moreover, at least 100% of those incidents of sinking were attributed to water, as demonstrated by our American contributor Roger Hughes, who successfully tested the theory by using a hosepipe to fill his boat. So, you see, there seems to be a close correlation between boats, sinking and PBO contributors.
By stark contrast the number of sinkings attended by the RNLI as a result of cribbage, dominoes and snooker was precisely zero, which is less than 1% – but it could so easily have been more.
That’s because snooker does have its perils for sailors, particularly at Maldon Yacht Club where the snooker table is in the hold of our sometimes floating and slightly leaky Thames lighter club house.
As well as bow-ties, which must be black and certainly not of the revolving type, the committee has decreed that players also wear chest waders, though galoshes are permitted for low-water matches on the signing of a legal waiver.
This has caused outrage as chest waders and galoshes are generally green and undermine the dignity of the game. It’s also downright dangerous, as a player nearly drowned once as his chest waders filled to the brim when he dropped his chalk and bent over to pick it up.
After that the committee made it mandatory to wear lifejackets for snooker, but didn’t specify whether they should be worn under or over your waistcoat, and that controversy is still rumbling on.
Either way, it’s going to make break building a deal more demanding, particularly at low water when our Thames lighter settles at an angle and all the balls roll to one side. A possible solution is square balls. At high water also, there’s quite a knack to keeping steady on a stun run-through shot with a bit of check side while sitting in a rubber dinghy.
While several members can tie a bow-line – or something resembling one, – behind their back with their eyes closed at the second or third attempt, no one has successfully managed to tie a bow-tie with their eyes open in front of a mirror. As a result a lot of members have resorted to sailing, or something closely resembling it.
This they do in dinghies, which is most certainly not to be recommended, as it mostly involves bailing, along with shouting and screaming ‘help’ and – on a good day – being rescued. No, if it’s floating you’re after you need a yacht, which can be acquired either with money or, for those on a budget, by subterfuge. Various types of yacht are available including yawls, cutters, sloops, pilot cutters or single-masted ketch-rigged bilge-keeled foiling barquentines. But in truth we wouldn’t recommend any of those because they might sink. No, if floating is your aim, what you need is a Sailfish 18.
This is because, as proved by science, water comes in through holes, and the Sailfish 18 simply doesn’t have any – not a one: no prop shaft, no inlets, no outlets whatsoever. The advantages of this were brought home to me when I was launched off a fork-lift truck in a London dock, and the driver instructed me to inspect the hull seals while he left me hanging in the strops and went off for a cup of tea. I went below and made a cup of tea while I tried to figure out what he was on about.
But there are disadvantages too. Having a boat without holes gives me precious little to write about, which is why I resorted to snooker.
‘If floating is your aim, what you need is a Sailfish 18’